


(don't need) another perfect lie

by shineyma



Series: chasing those lies [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe of an Alternate Universe, F/M, Fake Marriage, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 18:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15668484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shineyma/pseuds/shineyma
Summary: Jemma is ashamed to admit that her first reaction is panic. [An AU of mychasing those lies (you spend it all)verse.]





	(don't need) another perfect lie

**Author's Note:**

> I did an AU meme (give me the name of a fic/verse and I'll write an AU of it) on tumblr, and someone asked for the [chasing those lies verse](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/tagged/verse%3A-chasing-those-lies/chrono). You can read the whole 'verse via that link, but I think you'll understand this even if you don't.
> 
> Thanks for reading and, as always, please be gentle if you review! But be extra gentle this time because it's my birthday! You wouldn't wanna be mean to me on my birthday, right? <3

Jemma is ashamed to admit that her first reaction to her sudden realization is panic.

The good news is, it’s only a moment before she regains control of herself.

The _bad_ news is that a moment is long enough for her to text Ward their pre-arranged SOS signal.

“Oh, dear,” she murmurs as her phone immediately lights up with an incoming call. Ward will be frantic, she’s sure, and so there’s no time to collect herself before she answers. She’ll just have to hope none of her colleagues are paying close enough attention to notice if her tone is a bit off. “Tyler, darling! How’s your morning going?”

“Fine,” Ward says. In distinct contrast to her overly-cheerful greeting, he sounds perfectly casual and unconcerned. “Kinda lonely, though. Any chance I could talk you into an early lunch?”

Oh, bless him. He’s not only handed her an excellent excuse to leave immediately, he’s also given her a perfect justification for her emotional state. Her entire cover at Tempest Labs is centered around him—Claire Lynch left her high-paying job at an incredibly prestigious research institute in order to take this quieter, more flexible role that would allow her to be available to her recently-discharged veteran husband—and no one will think twice about her being distracted when he’s called her home this early in the day.

“Of course, love,” she says—and then bites her tongue, wondering if she’s poured it on too thick. Well, nothing for it but to keep going. “Did you have anything in mind?”

“Up to you,” he says over what sounds like an engine starting. He’s already on his way; thank goodness. “I’ll pick you up in fifteen?”

“I’ll be waiting,” she promises, and goes in search of her supervisor.

…Who is, as expected, perfectly sympathetic. “You take as much time as you need, Dr. Lynch. There’s nothing here that can’t wait.”

“Oh, thank you,” she says as she packs up a few files. “I might not be back this afternoon, depending on—well, on the situation—but I’ll try to look over the new project before tomorrow.”

“No rush,” Dr. Spero says good-naturedly. “Thanks to your excellent work on the Myria project, we’re weeks ahead of schedule. We can definitely afford a few delays.”

At that, Jemma’s heart seizes in her chest. She uses the excuse of bending to fetch another file from the bottom drawer of her lab bench to hide her face.

“I’m glad to hear it,” she says once she’s recovered. “I’ll text you as soon as I know whether I’ll be back.”

“Appreciate it,” Dr. Spero says brightly, and then moves on down the row to speak to Dr. Holcombe.

So dismissed, Jemma hurries to gather the rest of her things, double checks that her hard drive is secure at the bottom of her handbag, and then—as casually as possible—heads for the front door.

It’s only another three minutes before Ward drives up, but her heart races the entire time.

She makes a show of rather loudly asking, “Where shall we go for lunch?” as she clambers into the truck, but she doesn’t know that it matters—there’s no one else around.

Still, Ward waits until they’re well away from the building to ask, “What happened?”

“You may want to pull over,” she advises him. “Somewhere we won’t be interrupted—or noticed.”

“Are you in danger?” he demands.

“Not as far as I know,” she says. “That may change, but for the moment, my cover appears intact.”

“Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath. “Okay. There’s a parking garage on Fifth; nobody’ll notice another car in there.”

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” Jemma says as he slows to a stop at a red light. “I’m afraid I panicked a bit—if I’d been thinking, I’d have just waited until tonight.”

“Well, I could’ve done without the heart attack,” he acknowledges wryly. “But if it’s bad enough to make you panic, it’s probably better that I’m filled in as soon as possible.”

“There is that,” she agrees.

Seven very tense minutes later, Ward pulls into a parking spot on the third level of the garage. It’s quiet and dark—they’re in one of the more internal rows, far from the gaps between levels that serve as windows—and Jemma has the irreverent thought that the atmosphere is quite appropriate for what she has to say.

“So?” Ward asks as he shifts the truck into park. “What’s up?”

She takes a deep breath. “I thought I’d been given several different projects over the last few weeks—totally separate drugs with somewhat complementary purposes. It was only when I received my newest assignment this morning that I realized I was wrong.”

“Wrong how?” he asks, appearing understandably confused as to how this led to panic.

“They haven’t been giving me separate projects,” she says. “They’ve been giving me carefully divided bits and pieces of the _same_ project. Namely, Centipede.”

Ward’s breath audibly catches. “ _What_?”

“Centipede,” Jemma repeats, and finally lets herself fully feel the horror of that. “It’s the serum. I’ve spent the _entire time_ we’ve been undercover perfecting it for them—tweaking this and fixing that and—and that’s not even all! There’s the healing accelerant that brought us here in the first place and the _grenades_ —!”

“Hey, hey,” Ward interrupts. His hand lands on her knee and squeezes firmly. “Take a breath. It’s okay.”

“It is _not_ ,” she says, even as she grips his hand. “These people killed Mike Peterson and kidnapped and _tortured_ Coulson! They use _kill switches_ to force innocents into doing their dirty work! And I’ve just handed them—”

“—A way of disabling their enemies non-lethally,” he finishes somewhat forcefully. “If you hadn’t finished those dendrotoxin grenades for them, they’d only have _real_ grenades. Don’t think of it as helping Centipede, okay? Think of it as protecting people Centipede would’ve hurt otherwise.”

It’s a comforting thought…but not comforting enough.

“And the serum?” she demands. “That healing accelerant? You and May _already_ had trouble defeating them; just imagine how much harder it will be if any wounds you inflict are healing at five times the natural rate! Add that to the improvements I’ve made to the serum itself and I might as well have made them immortal!”

To that, Ward has nothing to say. Jemma buries her face in her hands, feeling thoroughly miserable.

She should’ve known better than to do so much for Tempest. The _whole reason_ Sitwell sent them here was because SHIELD suspected alien technology was in play in the trials for the healing accelerant. She should never have trusted Tempest and she _certainly_ shouldn’t have applied all of her considerable genius to every project that crossed her desk.

But the healing accelerant seemed so harmless. It was meant to _help_ people, and so too were all the other drugs that crossed Jemma’s desk—or so Tempest claimed. She thought she was doing good, both for the population as a whole _and_ for the SHIELD agents who would benefit from the intelligence Jemma intended to bring back to SHIELD with her. She was already plotting how to sneak a sample or two of the healing accelerant out of the lab.

And now this. What was she _thinking_? Even if there was no way to know that Tempest was a front for Centipede, she never should have—

Wait. _Wait_.

Somehow, a new thought has been sparked by that line of self-recrimination. Jemma goes cold.

“Ward,” she says, and he tenses at her tone.

“Yeah?” he asks warily.

“I’m the closest thing that SHIELD has to an expert on the Centipede serum,” she says, quite truthfully. It’s hardly a boast; she’s really the only scientist who’s had the opportunity to study it. “What are the chances that SHIELD would _unknowingly_ select me to go undercover as an employee at a Centipede front? That I would be assigned bits and pieces of the Centipede serum, but never the whole of it?”

He frowns. “What are you saying?”

“What if—what if someone at SHIELD—”

She can’t, it seems, actually say it. The possibility is too horrible to voice.

But Ward is shaking his head, and nothing about him speaks of the frantic denial hammering away in her chest. He looks calm—concerned, perhaps, but not as if he’s anywhere near as frightened as she is.

It’s reassuring.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence, no, but I don’t think it’s a conspiracy, either,” he says. His hand is still on her knee, and he slides it up a bit to rub her thigh soothingly. “Don’t forget how we ended up with enough free time to be sent undercover: SHIELD _just_ raided dozens of Centipede labs. It was probably something they found in one of those that put them on Tempest’s trail.”

That’s a reasonable enough assumption, but Jemma is shaking her head before he even finishes.

“No,” she says. “I went through all the summaries of the findings at the labs before we were even called to the Hub—and I looked at everything SHIELD had on Tempest while our covers were being finalized, remember? Neither one mentioned the other. Surely SHIELD would’ve put something in the files if they had such a strong lead on Centipede.”

Ward sits back in his seat with a heavy sigh. “There is that.”

“Coulson said that Raina knew things,” Jemma says, very slowly. She thinks she’s actually gone numb with horror; she can barely feel her mouth shaping the words she’s speaking. “Things she couldn’t possibly know about him. And the Clairvoyant found Mike’s son and—and Agent Amador!”

It _can’t_ be a coincidence. The Clairvoyant’s been all wrapped up in SHIELD since the beginning, and yet they didn’t even know about the Centipede project until Skye—a Rising Tide hacker no one could have predicted—carelessly revealed its existence?

She has to say it now. She has to face the possibility. “What if the reason the Clairvoyant is always one step ahead is because he’s a SHIELD agent?”

“You— _no_ ,” Ward says at once.

“Think about it,” she insists. “What if what he passes off as precognition is really just access to secure files? And all those raids during the search for Coulson—SHIELD just struck a major blow against his operation. How better to recapture his advantage than by arranging to have me, the scientist who’s spent _months_ studying his serum, work for him unknowingly?”

Ward doesn’t react for a long, long moment. It’s so long, in fact, that part of Jemma dares to hope that he’s found a flaw in her logic—that he’s seeing something she isn’t and that he’s about to point out why she must be wrong.

But when he does react, it’s by slamming his fist against the steering wheel and muttering, “Fuck.”

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she asks, and hates the tremor in her voice. Her eyes sting. “The Clairvoyant is a SHIELD agent.”

“Yeah,” Ward says. “You’re right.”

He punches the steering wheel again, and then—to her surprise—reaches across the console between them to drag her into a kiss. It’s harsh and angry and, despite the shock of it, Jemma melts into it at once. They’ve spent weeks living and sleeping together, pretending to be married, and the twist of his fingers in her hair has become comforting and familiar.

She fancies this must be his way of grieving such a betrayal—a member of their own agency, committing these horrific crimes!—and the thought that he’s chosen to grieve with _her_ lightens her heart to a probably-inappropriate degree.

Spending weeks pretending to be Ward’s wife has done nothing to cure her of her crush on him, she fears.

By the time he breaks the kiss, Jemma is utterly breathless. When she opens her eyes, the resignation on his face leaves her wrong-footed.

“You’re too smart for your own good,” he says heavily. “You know that?”

He’s hardly the first to say so, but she’s at a loss as to what’s prompted it. She’s left scrambling for a reply—and misses her chance to make it before he draws a night-night gun from beneath his seat.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says, and Jemma has one moment—just one—to be knocked senseless by the weight of shock and betrayal.

Then he pulls the trigger, and she knows no more.


End file.
